THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2021
Business
THE OBSERVER — 1A
AgLife
B
Thursday, July 1, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Oregon
minimum wage
increases July 1
Wyden:
Expect feds
to mobilize
fi refi ghters
By MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
SALEM — Oregon’s low-
est-paid workers will be earning
more beginning Thursday, July
1 — as much as $14 an hour
for some.
It’s the sixth of seven
increases the Legislature man-
dated in 2016, which have
steadily raised the state’s hourly
minimum from $9.25. Oregon
will have one of the highest min-
imum wages in the nation when
the new rates kick in Thursday,
but the rate varies considerably
depending on where you work.
Oregon lawmakers took an
innovative approach, mandating
diff erent minimums for diff erent
regions of the state, so the $14
hourly minimum applies only
to the three counties in the Port-
land metro area.
Employers in Deschutes and
other so-called standard coun-
ties will pay $12.75 an hour.
Those in Union, Wallowa and
other nonurban counties will
pay $12.
The diff erence is meant to
account for lower costs of living
outside the metro area.
The nation’s highest state-
wide or districtwide minimum
wage is in Washington, D.C., at
$15 an hour. Washington state’s
hourly minimum is $13.69. Mas-
sachusetts’ is $13.50, and Cal-
ifornia’s is $13. Many cities or
counties have higher minimum
wages than their states.
When Oregon’s higher min-
imums kick in, the wage fl oor
in the Portland area will have
climbed by more than 50%
since 2016. That works out to
nearly $10,000 more annually
for a full-time worker earning
the Portland area’s higher
minimum wage.
The minimums rise again in
July 2022, topping out at $14.75
an hour in the Portland area,
$13.50 in Deschutes County
and $12.50 an hour in Union
and Wallowa counties. Sub-
sequent increases will be tied
to infl ation.
The federal minimum wage,
meanwhile, has been stagnant
at $7.25 an hour since 2009.
There is a general agreement in
Congress that the national min-
imum should rise, but Republi-
cans and Democrats have been
unable to agree on how much
and how quickly.
That refl ects a perennial
debate among economists over
how much higher minimum
wages inhibit job growth, the
fear being that employers will
hire fewer workers if they must
pay them more. There’s no
debate, though, that it’s easier to
raise wages when the economy
is strong.
Oregon’s succession of min-
imum wage increases coincided
with a long stretch of economic
growth, when the state’s job-
less rate was at historic lows
– dependably below 4% in the
months before pandemic reces-
sion hit.
And even as the min-
imum wage rose, the number
of Oregon workers earning the
minimum steadily declined
from 7.3% in 2018 to 6.6% in
2019 and just 6.1% last year.
Some 123,000 workers state-
wide earned the minimum in
2020, according to the Oregon
Employment Department.
That could suggest that
employers were raising wages to
attract workers during the strong
economy, not only because the
state was mandating higher pay.
Of course, the pandemic
changed everything. Many low-
wage workers lost their jobs
last year when bars, restaurants
and other hospitality sectors cut
back or shut down. That meant
fewer workers in those indus-
tries, and fewer workers earning
the minimum.
And now, with employers
facing a labor shortage, there is
evidence that wages are rising
for a new reason — employers
racing to reopen after the pan-
demic are paying more so they
can staff up quickly and capi-
talize on the economic rebound.
a
BEE’S
LIFE
By CARLOS FUENTES
The Observer
LA GRANDE — Most people
see honey simply as a sweet
add-on to their afternoon tea or a
spread on their toast. But for Car-
oline Barnes, honey is more than
just a packaged syrup on market
shelves — it’s a way of connecting
with nature and fi nding the beauty
in our everyday environments.
“There’s nectar of 20,000
fl owers in a teaspoon of honey,
and that’s just the product of the
amazing tasks that bees do for us,”
Barnes said. “It’s such a beautiful
product, and uniquely fl avored,
that’s what really got me interested
in it.”
Barnes, who moved to La
Grande in 2006, has been bee-
keeping for 17 years. Her business,
Circle A Bees, is mostly a one-
person operation, but the bees do
most of the work. In 2020, Barnes
accumulated a total of 60 gallons
of honey.
In March, Barnes was one of
10 Oregon women selected for the
fi rst Farm2Food accelerator pro-
gram, sponsored by the National
Association of State Departments
of Agriculture Foundation.
See, Ranch/Page B2
See, Fires/Page B2
ness if they cannot adapt to the
new conditions of the pandemic,”
NASDA’s website states. “We are
helping women farmers become
more resilient during this crisis
through diversifying the products
they sell and helping them explore
new markets.”
Barnes was fi rst drawn to bee-
keeping through her father, who
maintained several hives into his
90s.
“I was intrigued by the bees
and their abilities to maintain
hives and how they communicate
and just all the things they do,” she
said.
However, Barnes, who hails
from Colorado, wasn’t always
interested in beekeeping. She
obtained a bachelor’s degree in
civil engineering from Colorado
State University in 1983, followed
by a few years in Alaska studying
arctic engineering. Several years
later Barnes moved to Bainbridge
Island, Washington, and earned a
master’s degree in water resource
engineering from the University of
Washington in Seattle.
It was in Washington that
Barnes discovered her passion for
beekeeping.
“My dad was scaling down
his hives when I was in Wash-
ington, and he gave me some of
his hive bodies, and that’s what
See, Bees/Page B2
A medley of mustangs
Horse ranch rescues
the overpopulated
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
IMNAHA CANYON — It’s
not the average horse that you’ll
fi nd at Dawn and Eddy Medley’s
ranch in the Imnaha Canyon. In
fact, it wasn’t so long ago many
of the horses were running wild
as mustangs throughout the West.
“I love doing this because they
(the mustangs) have no choice,”
says Dawn Medley, co-owner
of Medley’s Mustangs. “They
lost their families, and that’s
what these horses are all about
— family. I want to be able to
connect them to a ‘family’ and
to love them for as long as they
live.”
Medley’s Mustangs is an
operation just downriver from
Imnaha that helps train and adopt
out mustangs gathered from the
overpopulated herds descended
from once-domesticated horses
brought to the New World by the
Spanish. They’ve since reverted
from their domesticated state
to become feral animals — and
their numbers are growing like
crazy.
“The herds can double in four
to fi ve years if not managed prop-
erly,” Dawn says. “You could
have 1,000 to 1,200 horses where
they say you could only manage
150 to 250 horses. Horses eat
(available forage) straight down
to the ground, unlike cows,
where they’ll leave some of the
grass. (Horses) are pretty hard on
the ground.”
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Dawn Medley reins in “Girlfriend,” Medley’s wildest mare at Medley’s Mustangs, the
ranch she runs in the Imnaha Canyon with her husband, Eddy Medley, on Thursday,
June 10, 2021. Girlfriend was only a couple of weeks out of the wild. The Medleys
train wild horses and adopt them out to new owners.
Roaming largely on land man-
aged by the federal Bureau of Land
Management, regular attempts are
made to cull the herds and fi nd
owners and trainers to take them
under the BLM’s Wild Horse and
Burro Program. The Medleys’
nearly 18-acre operation is one of
those where they currently have a
half-dozen or so horses.
“We originally started in Sep-
tember of 2018,” Dawn says. “I
became a (Trainer Incentive Pro-
gram) trainer and we got our fi rst
(mustang) in October, so through
the Bureau of Land Management,
I’m basically a self-contractor. The
BLM partners up with the Mus-
tang Heritage Foundation and they
help fund the program throughout
the United States.”
Oregon Capital Bureau
It’s the rapid growth of the
herds that makes for an issue
involving both the government
and horse lovers.
“They can double in four to fi ve
years,” Dawn says.
For example, she says, at the
Beatys Butte Herd Management
Area near Lakeview the last gather
was in 2015. The BLM gath-
ered 100 horses, removed 50 and
returned 25 mares using fertility
control. She adopted one in 2015.
In another herd, 1,500 were
gathered in 2015 and returned only
100 — 60 studs and 40 mares to
the range.
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
The purpose of the acceler-
ator is to help women entrepre-
neurs and farmers gain skills in
marketing, product development,
packaging and pricing via a series
of virtual workshops. The pro-
gram, facilitated by the Oregon
Department of Agriculture and
funded by the 2019 Oregon Spe-
ciality Crop Block Grant Program,
began in May and will end in
September.
“I feel very honored to have
been selected to be a part of this
program,” Barnes said. “They put
a lot into creating the program
and I’m really grateful. It’s a lot of
work, but it’s really great to hear
the stories of the other women who
are involved.”
Barnes was the only participant
selected from Eastern Oregon. The
program involves watching videos,
reading articles and completing
interactive activities and assign-
ments. There are four modules
in the program, which take any-
where from three to six weeks to
complete.
According to NASDA, U.S.
farmers are expecting $522.5 mil-
lion in crop losses due to COVID-
19. The Farm2Food accelerator
program was specifi cally designed
to help female farmers who face
these losses.
“Women farmers, who typi-
cally have small-scale farms, could
be at risk of going out of busi-
By PETER WONG
SALEM — U.S. Sen.
Ron Wyden says he is
awaiting an announcement
by President Biden’s admin-
istration about a mobiliza-
tion plan for fi refi ghters and
equipment for widespread
forest fi res in the West.
The Oregon Demo-
crat told reporters Sat-
urday, June 26, that such a
mobilization plan is likely
to require more money as
well. He based his observa-
tion on a June 17 hearing of
the Senate Energy and Nat-
ural Resources Committee,
which heard a presenta-
tion by Chief Vicki Chris-
tiansen about Biden’s 2022
budget request for the U.S.
Forest Service.
That budget year starts
Oct. 1.
“I do think it will take
additional resources,”
Wyden, who sits on that
committee, said. “I think in
a matter of days, the Biden
administration will be out-
lining the steps that I have
touched on that constitutes
its strategy against this
grave threat.
“I believe what we will
hear about is making sure
there are personnel available
in the West to fi ght mul-
tiple fi res at the same time.
This is a departure from the
past. Usually we have one
big fi re and other western
states would chip in to help
the state that was hit the
hardest. Now, we are talking
about something that is
unprecedented: Big fi res
simultaneously throughout
the West.”
Wyden led the com-
mittee for about one year,
from 2013 to 2014, when he
took over the tax-writing
Finance Committee, which
he now leads again after
Democrats became the Sen-
ate’s majority party with
Vice President Kamala
Harris the tie-breaker in a
50-50 chamber.
Wyden continues to sit
on the Energy and Natural
Resources Committee as
the No. 2 Democrat behind
Chairman Joe Manchin, of
West Virginia. Senate rules
allow one committee chair-
manship per member.
Budget details are
decided by the Appropria-
tions Committee; Oregon
Sen. Jeff Merkley leads the
subcommittee that oversees
the Forest Service.
Wyden spoke on a
weekend when temperatures
exceeded 100 in virtually
all of Oregon, and drought
aff ects most of the state.
Wyden and Merkley
toured Oregon twice in
the aftermath of the 2020
Labor Day wildfi res, which
aff ected all four metropol-
itan areas on the westside
— Portland, Salem, Eugene
and Medford — with wild-
fi re smoke or worse. (The
Almeda fi re swept through
communities south of Med-
ford and destroyed an esti-
mated 2,500 homes, the
largest concentrated loss
statewide.)
Wildfi res also burned on
the central coast, Central
Oregon, and near Roseburg
and Grants Pass.
Wyden says he expects
one element of the response
plan to be cooperation
among the agencies respon-
sible for forest fi refi ghting.
“Local, state and federal
fi refi ghters are going to
be tightly coordinated in
Caroline Barnes removes a frame for inspection at a cluster of hives kept in Cove on Tuesday, June 22, 2021. The La Grande resi-
dent has nine hives throughout the region, and the honey from those bees produced nearly 60 gallons of honey in 2020.
La Grande beekeeper
selected for statewide
accelerator program
Senator says new norm
assumes multiple fires at
once in several states,
requiring more money
Overpopulation and
slaughter